One or more aspects of the invention relate, in general, to processing within a communications environment, and in particular, to facilitating error processing within a network of the communications environment.
Enterprise class computing systems, such as System z® offered by International Business Machines Corporation, implement advanced techniques to ensure the integrity of customer data and to provide nearly continuous service in the presence of hardware failure. Logic components which are integrated into such enterprise systems incorporate self-test error checking logic to detect component malfunction. In case of detection of malfunction, the integrity of customer data that currently traverses the respective component cannot be guaranteed. Thus, a malfunctioning component that threatens the integrity of the operations passing through it fences itself from the computing system immediately. This can be achieved by placing the malfunctioning component into a reset state, among other ways.
These enterprise class features have only recently been added to certain interconnect technologies, such as PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) and PCIe (PCI Express). As PCI and PCIe have evolved, their protection and recovery design points have grown increasingly sophisticated, including adding enterprise class features, such as fencing. However, sudden fencing of a component was not envisioned in the PCI Express standard (maintained by PCI Special Interest Group (PCI SIG)), and therefore, unfavorable situations have arisen.